Whether it’s beans or machines, grinders or pods, the Filter’s coffee expert Sasha Muller answered readers’ questions

• The best coffee machines, tested

Want to know how to make a barista-style brew at home or maybe where to buy the best coffee beans – or even which espresso machine is best? The Filter’s coffee expert, Sasha Muller, has been answering your questions.

Sasha has tested coffee machines, cafetieres, espresso machines and more for the Filter. You asked him about pretty much everything – from which decafs actually taste nice to the best grinders to use – and whether it’s possible to be too much of a coffee nerd.

Bean to cup coffee machines with dual hoppers do tend to cost a hefty premium, but one slightly more affordable option is the De’Longhi Rivelia. I do mean slightly, though – the most basic model which uses a manual steam wand is currently £575, and the fully automatic version I’ve tested in recent months is £675. It’s a great machine that justifies the premium over cheaper models – both in terms of its coffee brewing, which is superb, and its design. The masterstroke here is that the Rivelia comes with two plastic swappable bean hoppers which twist and lock into place. You do still end up with some beans left in the mouth of the grinder when you swap them over, but the Rivelia’s touchscreen gives you the option to purge the beans, or brew one last caffeinated (or decaffeinated) cup. And if only two types of beans isn’t enough then you can buy replaceable bean hoppers for £18 a pop.

It really depends what kind of coffee you like – and how you’re brewing it – but sadly I’ve struggled to find any real bargains. I’ve tried a bunch of the cheapest beans from the likes of Aldi and Lidl in recent months in the interests of science (and saving cash), and they’ve mostly been fine – but none of them have really hit the spot. It’s definitely worth looking out for time-limited deals on supermarket own brand beans and ground coffees – they can be surprisingly decent – but you’re partly at the mercy of how long the bags have been sitting on the shelves. With no roast dates on these coffees, they could be months old and past their best. It’s impossible to tell.

One of my guilty penny-pinching options is a big 1kg bag of Lavazza Rossa beans or similar. These occasionally come up on a deal for around £10 to £12, and although they’re by no means a refined pick – the experience is akin to someone smearing burnt toast and intensely bitter chocolate all over your taste buds – they make a mean Italian-style espresso and similarly potent cappuccino.

The BBC is under fire over its failure to remove a racial slur shouted by John Davidson, who has Tourette syndrome, from its broadcast of the Bafta awards. Davidson was heard shouting the N-word while two stars of the film Sinners, Delroy Lindo and Michael B Jordan, were on stage. He said controversy over the incident had left him “distraught” and that he had been assured any offensive words would be edited out. The BBC has apologised for the error and said producers overseeing the coverage did not hear the slur. Lucy Hough is joined by the Guardian’s assistant opinion editor Jason Okundaye – watch on YouTube

The sex offender could exploit these masters of the universe ​because, despite their privilege, ​they still felt short-changed by life

One of the things that has been frequently puzzled over as the effluent of the Epstein story flows on, is how a college dropout who thought it was cool to do typos managed to persuade the world’s most powerful into his lair. What, precisely, was the nature of his “genius”? Was it blackmail? Was it the social pyramid scheme of using one big name to reel in another? Nothing has come close to explaining it until, with the latest crop of details from the Epstein files, something has become suddenly clear: that it wasn’t the trafficked girls and women who Jeffrey Epstein groomed. The man’s real talent, if we want to call it that, was in the grooming of his cohort of associates.

This isn’t to say, of course, that the men and occasional woman who threw in their lot with a man we must straight-facedly refer to as “the dead paedophile” weren’t culpable. Nonetheless, if you study the huge amount of Epstein-related material, from the New York Times’s deep dive into his finances to the vast cache of correspondence contained in the files, a picture emerges of a man who did the kind of number on his peers that you would more commonly see directed at victims. While multiple survivor testimonies indicate that Epstein regarded the girls and women he trafficked as of such low consequence he didn’t even need to bother to groom them – per Virginia Giuffre’s account, Epstein raped her the first time they met – all of his resources, via a variety of tactics, went into capturing the allegiances of powerful men.

Emma Brockes is a Guardian columnist

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Hello and welcome to The Long Wave. Last week I went to watch the play Deep Azure, written by the late actor Chadwick Boseman, at the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse, part of the Globe theatre in London. It’s a show full of verve, poetry powered by hip-hop, Jacobean verse and beautifully choreographed movement. I spoke to Tristan Fynn-Aiduenu, the play’s director, about the importance of reviving Black work and the responsibility of not only honouring Boseman’s memory but also showcasing the full spectrum of the Black experience globally.

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• UK politics live – latest updates

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• UK politics live – latest updates

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